You’re no genius! Banker told to split £180m with his ex
‘GENIUS’ DIVORCE 2
A MILLIONAIRE banker who claimed his ‘financial genius’ meant his ex-wife did not deserve an equal share of his £ 180million fortune has lost his bitter legal battle.
Randy Work had launched an appeal against a High Court decision to award his unfaithful former wife Mandy Gray half of his wealth.
His lawyers claimed the judge had not taken into account his ‘special contribution’ and ‘genius’ money-making abilities when settling the divorce in 2015.
But three Court of Appeal judges yesterday dismissed his appeal.
In previous hearings Mr Work’s legal team had painted him as a ‘financial genius’ and argued Miss Gray should get only a 39 per cent share.
They said it was grossly unfair that Miss Gray should walk away with an equal share of the money he earned while making billions for private equity giant Lone Star.
Mr Work’s financial input into the marriage was so ‘ wholly exceptional’ he deserved ‘special treatment’, claimed barrister Nicholas Cusworth QC.
But this was rejected in March 2015 by Mr Justice Holman, who ruled the concept of ‘genius’ could not be applied to Mr Work and his wife of almost 20 years should receive half his fortune.
‘I personally find that a difficult, and perhaps unhelpful, word in this context,’ he said. ‘To my mind, the word “genius” tends to be overused and is properly reserved for Leonardo Da Vinci, Mozart, Einstein.’
Yesterday Britain’s top civil judge, the Master of the Rolls, Sir Terence Etherton, backed the original ruling and dismissed the appeal.
Mr Work, 50, and 48-yearold Miss Gray – who are both American – married in 1995 and had two children before settling in London in 2008. When they met, both were in ‘good but modest jobs’ and had ‘no significant financial resources’, said the judge.
But this changed when Mr Work studied for an MBA course while his wife worked to support the family. He got a job with Lone Star in 1997 and, between then and leaving the company in 2008, earned £240million.
Mr Justice Holman heard how the couple split in 2013 after Miss Gray had an affair with their ‘personal physiotherapist’. They have since spent almost £3million on divorce lawyers, a sum Sir Terence described as ‘profligate and unnecessary’.
The marital fortune stood at over £180million when Mr Justice Holman ordered Mr Work to hand over half to his ex-wife. He ruled a post-nuptial agreement had no impact on her claim and Mr Work’s contribution was not so exceptional as to justify a departure from the normal equal division rule.
He said that while Mr Work was an ‘astute businessman’, Miss Gray was a ‘ highly intelligent’ woman who had given up her job to follow her husband to Tokyo for his work – and it was down to her willingness to move that he was able to amass his wealth.
He added: ‘It would, in my view be unjustifiably gender discriminatory to make an unequal award. This was a marriage of two strong and equal partners over 20 years.
‘They each contributed in a range of different, but all of them important, ways.’